Americans should feel exceptional based on country's origins

This past week the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, made the implication that “American exceptionalism” is dangerous; that we as Americans should not encourage this idea of exceptionalism, that we are not all that we think we are.

Over time we have been told that the term “American exceptionalism” implies that we’re an exceptional nation because of our power, or our military, or our economy. The world, and so many Americans alike, have been told that our claim to exceptionalism is rooted in arrogance.

So many Americans have been convinced that claiming we are exceptional is a bad thing that it’s something we shouldn’t go around saying because in reality our power, our money, our military, none of these things make us exceptional and we are just like every other country.

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Frankly, the world is right. Our power, our money, our military, none of this makes us exceptional, but those who believe we are just another country — those who believe we aren’t exceptional — are sorely mistaken.

We are an exceptional nation. This exceptionalism does not lay in our power, or military, or even our economy, it lies in our foundation.

While other nations have founded their countries on culture, language, and even religion, our foundation is much more unique, and is the only foundation like it on this earth. Our foundation is an idea.

This idea is what makes America so special, when the rest world did not risk challenging authority, America rose up from the ashes and said “We the People”! We challenged the tyrannical forces of the world by coming together as one and saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

For the first time we as a people, we as Americans, said something others were too afraid to even think. We said that our rights came not from the government but from the Creator; that our government and its authority was to be made not by a king or nobles, but by free men of our nation. We ensured through law that common men were entitled to rights, that they were entitled to freedom! We believed in limited government, not excessive government; we believed in free market principals.

We believed in a nation where despite your beginnings, rich or poor, you were free to become whatever you dreamed of as long you were willing to do the work. That government would never be a limit on you or your dreams, and that the only limitation on your ability to succeed was where you allowed your own ambitions to take you. We aren’t a country rooted in arrogance; we’re a country rooted in Freedom.

It doesn’t matter if we are big or small, powerful or not, rich or poor, those things don’t make us or anyone else exceptional. But freedom — that is what makes us exceptional.

And look at all of the things freedom has provided us: We are powerful, we are a wealthy nation, we are a strong and free people. These are only things that can be accomplished to its fullest through freedom, and we are a nation built on freedom, we are the first and only nation to be built on freedom, and that is exceptional!

So maybe President Putin is right; our exceptionalism is dangerous, it can be destructive. But it is only a danger; it is only destructive to those that oppose freedom, to all those to oppose liberty and justice for all.

There are people out there that hate what America stands for. They hate freedom and crave ultimate power. These people would have you and the rest of the world believe that what we call American exceptionalism is rooted in arrogance, not freedom, but we all know better.

These people would have you put your faith in them, they’d have you put your faith in government, but we say no! We as Americans put our faith in the people, we put our faith in freedom.

And thank God for that.

Michael Banerian is a student at Oakland University and a resident of Bloomfield Hills.